Tarzan and John Carter are deservedly famous. But I have extracted a perhaps unexpected amount of enjoyment from several of Edgar Rice Burrough’s less well known books, such as The Mucker, I Am A Barbarian, The Outlaw of Torn, and The Mad King. Now add to that The Land of Hidden Men.
The Land of Hidden Men was originally titled Jungle Girl. I consider the new title a marginal improvement, though not ideal. Still, it does accurately hint that the story dabbles in lost world tropes. Our hero, Gordon King, is a man of leisure; a doctor with independent means and thus no need to practice his profession; a former college athlete specializing in the javelin throw. He enters a Cambodian jungle as an amateur archaeologist and is immediately lost. This vast jungle is the location of two utterly secluded, warring city states with no contact with the outside world. King is injured, starved, and endures what he believes is a hallucinogenic fever. He saves an important man from a tiger and is nursed to health by two escaped slaves. He encounters a beautiful girl, falls in love, becomes a soldier for one of the city states, abducts the girl from a king, is recaptured, becomes a prince, fights in a pitched battle atop an elephant, etc. Plenty of action. It never really stops. I appreciate that Gordon King’s background as both a physician and a javelin thrower become essential to the plot, rather than being mere background information.
Weak points? I suppose. It feels rather slight. The subplot with the primitive semi-human brute is abandoned, the mystery of his existence/racial identity never resolved. The potential love triangle involving King’s childhood girl next door friend/potential girlfriend is never really developed. As with most of this sort of tale, it traffics in coincidence and sheer luck. But the vigorous, forward driving nature of the narrative moves the reader rapidly past any inclination to indulge in pettifoggery.
So, in all a pleasant way to pass a few hours, if not much more than that. And why does it need to be more?
Now, on to commercial matters. I’ve signed a contract for another short story. This makes me happy. Once the publication is available for purchase, I’ll provide the relevant details. If you cannot possibly wait to get your hands on something I’ve written, you have any number of options. Pick up something and enjoy.
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Congrats on your short story sale!
THE LAND OF HIDDEN MEN was one of the first ten ERB novels I ever bought. I happened to be really interested in the Khmer at that point, but I enjoyed it as a reread years later. The are passages of poetry and mystery here n’ there. It’s one of Burroughs’ novels where a (fairly) average CIVILIZED guy has to take it to the next level in a more savage situation, a theme that Milius explored quite a bit.
BTW, I’m CONVINCED that the cover was intended to be Tarzan and the actual cover by Frazetta was repurposed to be the cover for ESCAPE ON VENUS. Compare the Frazetta version of that with the Krenkel version of JUNGLE GIRL. Same thing, different angle. Prove me wrong.
Interesting thought on covers! Looking at the Krenkel and the two Frazettas, I can’t actually prove you wrong, though I would call the case ambiguous. I think Frazetta’s actual (used) cover for The Land of Hidden Men resembles the Krenkle version more closely compositionally, though with the heroine replaced by the hero, the tiger by a panther, and the ruin with more jungle. Frazetta’s Escape on Venus cover, meanwhile, owes little to Krenkel other than the woman-tiger confrontation; it also arms the woman with a knife and makes the tiger quite alien-looking, seemingly more suited for Venus than Earth. (If so, though, he didn’t do his homework; the Venusian tiger-equivalent, the Tharban, would have horizontal red-and-white stripes rather than vertical orange and black ones.) Really, I feel the two Frazettas resemble each other more than either does the Krenkel, in that each gives us a mostly nude, knife-wielding human confronted by a big cat in the jungle…